ALBUM REVIEW: Cold – Vomit The Soul

It has been 12 long years since the world was last side swiped with a brutally unforgiving album from VOMIT THE SOUL. With a grisly brand of slamming brutal death metal, the Italians made a name for themselves with their sophomore album Apostles Of Inexpression back in 2009, gaining themselves a strong following in the underground metal scene. As a result of the album’s success, the band have shared the stage with the likes of grindcore godfathers NAPALM DEATH and German technical death metal cult heroes NECROPHAGIST. After Apostles Of Inexpression was released, the band split up, but 2020 saw them reunite with a fresh, groove centric sound. Cold has been violently spewed forth from the depths, and growing from the acidic bile comes a malevolent behemoth of brutal death metal. 

Filled to the brim with frantic and chaotic riffs, skull pounding blast beats and beastly gutturals, Cold is by all intents and purposes exactly what you want it to be. Whilst the album does have the staple slamming brutal death metal tropes, there is a technical side to proceedings that has been allowed to shine through. In comparison to their previous offering, VOMIT THE SOUL have honed their sound and tightened up their performance in the year since their reunion, making the album devilishly precise and cohesive to deliver a meticulous sonic bludgeoning.

The relentlessly fast pacing leaves you with precious little time to catch your breath before you’re launched into the maelstrom again, being thrown around like a rag doll in the turbo cycle of a tumble dryer. This insane and frantic energy is kept up throughout the album, and, with only fleeting dynamic shifts in tempo, it is fair to say that they band may have lost some of their slamming tendencies and leaned more into the technical and brutal aspects of their sound. As a result it can be quite exhausting to keep up. 

Whilst the album doesn’t break any new ground, there are moments that show their influences and harken back to a raw and unforgiving earlier era in death metal history. With bass lines that sound like they’ve been plucked from a NECROPHAGIST or CRYPTOPSY album and gutturals that are fit for a DYING FETUS record. This amalgamation of influential styles combined with a more technical approach has raised the band to a whole new level. Cold stands over the band’s previous work with a menacing glint its eye and the self-confidence to assert itself as the heaviest thing that the band has written.

The title track sets the tone for the album from the very beginning, and you know that VOMIT THE SOUL are not here to make up numbers but to attempt to dominate. Mausoleum Of Ineptitude and Prelude To Nothing offer up a barbaric assault in the middle of the album, continuing its ludicrously fast pace. It isn’t until you get to the penultimate track Venerable No-One that you get a small slice of variety. The intro to the song has a slow, sludgy groove that appears throughout the song, but it isn’t long until the frantic nature of the album catches up with it. 

While Cold can be considered a triumphant return for a band that disappeared just as they were about to get some significant traction, this album seems stuck between the old and the new, restless to keep up with the newer developments in the genre but frantically trying to hold onto its roots in the tried and tested old school. There are some flashes of brilliance in there but it takes some sifting through the played out tropes of brutal death metal to get to them. 

Rating: 5/10

Cold is set for release on November 12th via Unique Leader Records. 

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